Allah's Will
by goolcaptain
Summary: A huge terrorist attack devestates Boston Harbour. Amidst the carnage, who will ask? Who can Tru save?


Genre; Tru Calling. Inspired by my attending the Sept 11th commemoration in New York this year it moved me a great deal so I thought I'd put it into print. Then the London bombings happened here yesterday and I thought it was time for a reprint.  
Summary; Al Quaida launch a massive terrorist attack on Boston harbour. Tru and Davies are overwhelmed by dozens of dead bodies. But she has a second chance in life. Whom can Tru save amongst the carnage?  
R; Violence aplenty and ribald language including racism.  
Disclaimer; All these characters belong to 20th Century Fox and not me and this fic is designed purely as a non profit work for internet distribution.

I've republished this as I originally put it in as rated M which means it doesn't appear in Just In or the archive so I've taken out some of the swearing a violence and put it back in.

Feedback; can't leave my address to contact me through my author name on the list

Allah's Will

He checked himself in the mirror one last time. He had shaved himself properly, according to the rituals. He would not be denied entrance to paradise due to not performing them correctly. The prayers had been said, the purification ceremonies observed. He was dressed all in white, ready for his ascension, into the arms of the prophet and his own private coterie of virgins. With them he would enjoy for all time the pleasures of the flesh he had so assiduously denied himself in life. He looked forward to it.  
It was time.

"Why the hell would she have them that big?"  
Davies shrugged. "Attention, self esteem, present for her husband. Maybe she was a stripper or a hooker. They could have been an investment. Maybe tax-deductable? They're good work, I think I recognize the surgeon". Between them they slid the buxom corpse into the cooler. There was no rewind, no resetting of the day. She had died of a brain hemorrhage, just sat down on the subway and died then and there. It had been her time.  
"Why do guys go for huge breasts all the time?" Tru wondered aloud, stripping off her plastic gloves.  
"Because we breastfeed as infants" Davies pointed out.  
"Ah but so do girl babies!" Tru responded.  
"And if you took a batch of little girls and showed them pictures of women in swimsuits they'd prefer the, ah, better endowed ones too, they'd consider them prettier. That's why Disney draws their heroines the way they do. But when you're 13 you get a pair of your own to play with and the novelty goes out of it"  
Tru nodded. "Guess so. Why we like Barbie. Still I'd never have plastic surgery"  
Davies poured them both a cup of coffee. "You looked in the mirror lately? Besides, you're only 23, we'll have this talk again when you're 35 and have had 2 kids and see what you say then"  
Tru gestured towards her cleavage. "Hey, perfectly happy with what I've got, thank you very much"  
Davies sipped his coffee. "You own a wonderbra Tru?"  
Tru quickly sipped her coffee, drinking it down so hard she almost burnt her tongue.  
"Did you enjoy going to that stripclub with Harrison to save those frat boys? That time you saved that soldier, did you ever give that nurses uniform back?" Davies pressed.  
"Would you look at the time!" Tru exclaimed sweeping from the room, pointing to her wrist. It took Davies a second to realize she wasn't wearing a watch today.

They disconnected the the pipe, the fuel oil splashing over their robes. Mohammed looked at it with annoyance but he doubted it would matter. At least the chief engineer would no longer have to wonder what was making that dreadful rattling sound in the engine pipes.  
They unwrapped the pistols and spare magazines from the dozen layers of cling film they had secured them in, stripping and cleaning them carefully. Makarov's, 9mm Short. It struck him as strange that they were going to attack the mightiest superpower the world had ever known with a pair of handguns and exactly 36 bullets between them. The biblical tale of David and Goliath sprung to mind, however inappropriate that might be. But they had something more valuable with them than firepower.  
God was with them.

"No, Harrison, not a rewind day. And even if it was I wouldn't have a clue who won the game. And even if I did I wouldn't tell you. Because this is a way to help people, not a way to settle your gambling debts!"  
"Tru you're killing me here. You can save people AND make money you know!"  
"Wonder Woman didn't make money out of rescuing people and neither will I"  
He sighed wistfully down the phone "Do you remember that was the only show dad used to watch with us when we were kids?"  
Tru smiled "Yeah. Thinking about it now he probably enjoyed it for different reasons than we did"  
"Remember my old girlfriend Cassie? Well sometimes she liked to dress up for me and…."  
"GOODBYE Harrison!"

The Filipino crewman gave them an odd glance as they made their way to the bridge but didn't question them, no one did.  
"Nice outfit!" the helmsman actually had time to giggle before he saw the gun.

"Do you think it's true?" Tru asked chewing on her hotdog.  
Meredith took another swig of her Diet-Coke "Lil'sis, let me tell what I think. Every man walks into a room and thinks to himself 'Could I beat all these other men in a fight and could I sleep with all these women?'. Every woman walks into the room and thinks to herself 'Do these men want to sleep with me and are her hips/boobs bigger than mine?…BITCH!"  
Tru laughed. "What about gay people?" she asked, supping her own Coke.  
Meredith finished her hotdog. "Well a gay guy enters the room and says 'Do all these men want to have sex with me?' and 'Those shoes with that top! What was she thinking?"  
Tru spluttered, laughing heartily into her drink but Meredith was on a roll. "Now a lesbian, she walks into the room and says to herself 'Do these women want to sleep with me?' and 'Could these men get rid of the spiders in my bathroom?"  
"Still scared of them?" Tru asked.  
"Hey, I always knew Harrison had to have some uses. Anyway, do you know what the difference between a puppy and a boyfriend is?"  
"You need a licence for a puppy?"  
"No, you can train a puppy and eventually they grow up!"  
Tru grinned. "You're awfully chipper today" she observed.  
Meredith finished her drink. "We got a huge deal today providing legal services for the Iraq re-construction, gonna earn us millions and a large chunk of that might be heading my way. We're all going out tonight to celebrate"  
"As long as that's the only coke you'll be taking" Tru replied pointing to her can. She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. Meredith looked at her coldly.  
"I'm sorry, it's just that I worry…"  
"I'm not mom Tru. I'm not going anywhere"  
Tru extended her arms. "Gimmie a hug?"  
Meredith embraced her. "Now, now, I'm not going to fall out with my little Tru. Besides I'd miss the look of shock on people's faces when I tell them I'm popping down the morgue for lunch"  
"It is fun to mess with them" Tru agreed.

He shot the captain in the stomach, the gunshot impossibly loud in the confines of the wheelhouse. Abdul shot the pilot. Both fell to the floor.  
Mohammed turned his gun on the first officer. "Sound abandon ship. NOW!"  
The shocked Malaysian stared blankly down the barrel of the pistol. Mohammed thought his voice sounded unnaturally soft with the muzzle-blast still echoing in his ears. As his hearing returned he could make out the soft moaning of the captain, clutching his guts, the vivid red stain spreading slowly over the front of his starched white uniform.  
"Mohamme…?" the first officer began.  
Mohammed shot him too.

Davies was staring out the window which wasn't that unusual. What was unusual was that this time he was actually staring at something.  
"Fireworks?" Tru observed, looking out towards the docks.  
"Yeah" Davies was flipping through his diary. "I wonder what they're celebrating? There doesn't seem to be any special occasion today"  
"Maybe the British are re-invading?" Tru suggested.  
Davies laughed "That's Baltimore, not Boston. Nowadays they only invade us with their pop singers"  
"And reality TV" Tru returned. "Maybe it's Meredith's company, they clinched a big deal today" She frowned wryly "Not much of a display…"  
As if on cue the blast wave hit them, shattering the glass and hurtling them backwards. The sound struck a moment later as Davies rolled onto Tru, shielding her body with his own.  
The ringing in her ears simply would not stop. 'Tinitus' that's what they called it. She knew it might be permanent. She also considered how strange it was that she could recall her medical training at a time like this.  
Davies gingerly rolled off her and helped her to her feet. They timidly peeked through the windows across the shattered skyline. She opened her mouth to allow the pressure to equalize in her skull, her hearing starting to return. She heard the echo of the blast in the distance, like echoing, retreating thunder. It was followed by the tinkling of broken glass that gradually fell still until there was true silence, as if the very city itself was drawing breath. The silence was bit by bit invaded by the tuneless wail of a thousand sirens, the flashing lights of the firetrucks and ambulances, the clatter of police helicopters, all converging towards the source of the blast.  
A huge mushroom cloud was unfurling over the waterfront. Tru could not remove her eyes from a sight she truly thought she would never witness.  
"It's not…it couldn't be?" she stuttered, suddenly afraid.  
Davies shook his head, unleashing a torrent of plaster dust and shattered glass onto the floor. She noticed he was bleeding, a large ragged cut on his forehead. She grabbed a sterile wipe from the table and started to tend his wound.  
"No, doesn't have to be a nuke. Any big enough explosion will do that. If it had have been we'd have both been blinded by the flash" He turned to her "We'd better start with the emergency plan. We're bound to have lots of bodies coming in"  
Tru nodded numbly. "Meredith!" she realized suddenly. "Harrison!". She started dialing her mobile phone along with a million other people in the city.

She was still trying to reach them when the first bodies started arriving. The first ones weren't that bad, the rescuers reaching the outside of the explosion, nothing worse than the countless car crash victims Tru had encountered. As time went on they got progressively worse. Skin torn off so they looked like some kind of illustration in a physiology book, red, raw and dripping. Massive burns, flesh crisp and brittle like overdone pork chops. Limbs missing, the stumps fused and cauterized as neatly as a medieval surgeon due to the heat. Genitalia and facial features scorched off so that it was impossible to even tell even the gender. Some bodybags had more than one corpse in them, random body parts gathered together and left for her to rearrange into neat piles, left for her to try and bring some kind of order to these messy, fragile human bodies over come by this unimaginable catastrophe. A head lacking a body, probably a woman's to judge by the size and the length of the hair.  
Slippery flesh oozed and rubbed between her gloved fingers, some still warm, some now cold and clammy. She became inured to the smell but she couldn't look away from the humanity so randomly chopped and mutilated by a force that had no regard to the aesthetics of the human form.  
One, an Arab man, had ligature marks around his throat. His face was a mask of pain, he'd obviously hung himself the wrong way, choking instead of breaking his neck. Had he lost someone? Or something? His business, his home? Maybe he was nothing to do with the explosion at all? Tru doubted he'd be the only suicide they'd see after today's events. She hurriedly made notes then moved on to the next body.  
At first he looked alright. No burns, nothing missing. Perhaps he'd been killed by the concussion, his insides scrambled but outwardly intact. Perhaps he'd fallen and broken his neck. Maybe he'd had even had a heart attack, not an unreasonable response to this mornings events. He still bore a necklace around his neck, the Star of David shining brightly. A Boston cop who wasn't Irish, that was a rarity.  
His eyeball was hanging over his cheek by a good two inches, literally blown out of his skull by the blast wave, the optic nerve still anchoring it into the socket. Tru tried to remember which Friday the 13th film she'd watched where Jason had crushed a man's skull to just that effect. Was it part 3 or 4? It hardly mattered. She would never watch such films again. It couldn't have been that good anyway, she dimly remembered back to when she was 16, going to 3rd base for Nick Alexander whilst watching that video in the living room, washing it down with her dad's stolen liquor as his parents slept upstairs.  
It seemed wrong to leave it there, untidy.  
When she had been a child her father had taken her fishing. It had been a wonderful day, a golden memory of her youth. But she could never bear to take the fish of the hook. She loved to cast them back into the water but she could never bring herself to pry the gasping, flailing fish from the hook, their pain was just too much for her to take, a six year old automatically empathizing with the world around her. But her father had always been there, would step in and do this unpleasant thing for the sake of his little girl, to spare her this horrible task.  
How she wished her father was here now.  
She took the eyeball gently in her hand and fed it slowly back into the socket. It seemed somehow taboo, handling this most delicate part of the anatomy with just her fingers. It made a squelching sound as it resumed its' rightful position once again. Once inside it turned 90 degrees the wrong way leaving only the white showing.  
Tru turned away to the next body.  
He reached up and seized her arm, his bloodied fingers leaving vicious bruises on her skin. He stared her in the face, one eye bloodied, the other pure and unnatural white.  
"Help him" he whispered through lips that had been reduced to a formless hole surrounded by fused scar tissue.  
"Oh thank you God, thank you!" she intoned, closing her eyes as the day reset itself.

"Morning sleepyhead" Kristine ruffled her hair with hand as Tru opened her eyes. For a moment Tru just basked there, taken from a scene of indescribable horror to place of untold comfort and joy. The sunlight from the window bathed over her naked skin, combined only with the divine feeling of clean white sheets. Her apartment was large and airy, a benefit of being a city employee, you got subsides for your rent. She would miss that when she eventually went to medical school.  
It smelt welcomingly familiar, the air still filled with the Thai Chicken Kristine had made for them last night mixed with the wine and the after dinner coffee. And then there were the more immediate odors, shampoo and perfume and sweet, sweet female sweat.  
And then there was Kristine. So warm, her skin so soft, her arms feeling so good wrapped around Tru, her fingers running through gently through the strands of Tru's hair. She closed her eyes again as she felt the sweet brush of her lips plant a light kiss on her forehead. Resting her head between her breasts she realized the truth of Davies' argument.  
As she closed her eyes the visions of the previous day flooding into them. The visceral pain and suffering, the horror overwhelming her. She snapped awake again.  
Tru leapt out of bed and grabbed her clothes. She snatched her mobile phone…  
"Tru, what's wrong?"  
She gazed at Kristine. She looked terrified, holding the sheet against her naked body. Tru paused, realizing what she was doing to her. This was a women with grown up children. A woman who up to six months ago had had a happy marriage. Who for 45 of her 46 years had considered herself heterosexual. Now she was out of the closet, having her first gay relationship with a girl who probably reminded her of her daughters. She thought back to the first day she had met her in the hallway, starting her new life in an apartment building filled with strangers. She'd been so shy it had taken nearly a week for her to speak to Tru.  
She probably thought Tru's sudden flight was some kind of disgusted rejection.  
She crossed over and sat on the bed. Kristine realized the futility of trying to cover herself after last night and let the sheet slip down, as naked now as Tru was. Tru placed a hand on her shoulder and kissed her, tonguing her for all she was worth. She replied with gusto.  
Eventually they broke and Tru looked her in the eye. "This isn't about you. Last night was wonderful, more wonderful than I can tell you. But I've just realized something terrible to do with work and I have to go right now, do you understand?"  
She smiled bashfully and nodded  
"She's not mom" Tru told herself for the millionth time. You didn't have to be Freud to speculate on a girl who'd lost her mother at an early age entering into an intimate relationship with an attractive older woman. But it wasn't that. She looked very different to Tru's mother, light brown hair with softly pretty features. She was taller and if truth be told more voluptuous. What attracted Tru most was the gentle kindness that seemed to ebb from her, a vulnerability that Tru felt as well. That they had both been pitched into a new life that was not of their making and beyond their control.  
Hell, she wasn't even certain she was gay or bi or straight or just curious or whatever. Not yet.  
A thought occurred to her. "Where are your children today?"  
Kristine seemed a little taken aback by the question. "Um…Michael's in California with his dad. Michelle and Sarah are in Italy for the summer"  
"Don't go near the waterfront today, whatever you do, don't go near the waterfront. Don't leave the gallery, not even for lunch"  
"Why?"  
"Trust me, I heard it from a cop friend of mine" She took her hands in hers "Promise me?"  
"I promise"  
She kissed her again.

He watched them flock into the lifeboat. He recalled their frequent practices. He was sure they would beat their record this time.  
The third mate lowered the captain into the boat, eager hands taking his form and lying him gently at the bottom of the vessel, the contents of the first aid kit rapidly shared out and used to treat his wounds. Mohammed was glad. He was a good man, especially for a crusader, well liked by the crew. He bore no enmity to his shipmates, they were not his foes. They might even survive.  
The mate was the last to go. A fellow believer, from Pakistan, they had prayed and read the Koran together. Now was the time to see where his loyalties truly lay.  
He took him by the arm. "Stay with us brother. Enter paradise as a martyr"  
The mate looked at him for a moment before shaking his arm off. "Go to hell!" he spat at him jumping into the lifeboat.  
Mohammed let them go. It was no sin to kill an unbeliever. It was only a sin to kill a fellow Muslim.

"Harrison, I don't have time to argue. Get Meredith and get her clear of the city. I don't care what you have to tell her, just get her out of here" she hung up and called Davies again. "Any joy?"  
"I've done my best but without details I don't think they're taking me seriously. Still, every agency and news service in Boston has been told that there's a bomb at the waterfront. Where are you now?"  
"Don't worry about me…"  
"TRU, you're not where I think you are?"  
"Davies you don't remember how bad things were, I need to be here, this is the most important thing I've ever done. Stay at the morgue, if I fail the city is going to need you more than ever"  
She hung up, coming to the dockside. There were various police cars and ambulances scattered around. Tru breathed a sigh of relief.

Mohammed re-entered the bridge, stepping over the bodies of the pilot and the first officer. He did not look at them. He could already smell the burning from the rest of the ship as Abdul went from compartment to compartment, soaking it with fuel oil and setting it ablaze. When they struck the harbor wall he would open the gas valves and release the cargo. It was fitting that Mohammed should be the leader however. The literal meaning of Abdul was 'one who follows'.  
He adjusted the wheel. A tanker was so much easier to pilot than an airliner. Boston harbor filled the bridge windows. He had never been to America before. Now he never would but he would die within sight of it. He knew the history of the place, that hundreds of years ago men derided as terrorists at the time staged an act of defiance by subterfuge against a distant authority. Now they were regarded as freedom fighters, their actions celebrated every year. Americans always spoke fondly of freedom, freedom for everyone but themselves.  
He looked beyond the waterfront, dimly able to make out the city beyond. So different from his home on the Gaza Strip. He wondered if they made the bulldozers here? He remembered the night the bulldozers came and destroyed his home. He remembered the distant clatter of the helicopter gunship and missile that wiped out his family, the remnants proudly bearing the stenciled markings 'Made in the USA'.  
There were no naval ships in sight. That was a shame, he would liked to have destroyed one. Destroyed a ship whose idea of war was firing missiles against villages from hundreds of miles away. And they called terrorists cowards?  
But there was a tanker. A tanker laden with the oil they thought so precious. Precious enough to oppress and subjugate an entire race, to kill thousands of innocent people in their quest for yet more wealth and support unpopular dictatorial regimes that were an affront to Islam.  
He steered with his left hand, obeying the Arab prejudice against it. With the other he took out his copy of the Koran and began to read out loud.

The distress flares soared skywards, immediately attracting the attention of everyone present. A bright orange Coastguard launch quickly turned and started making it's way towards the lifeboat. Tru realized what the fireworks they had seen really were. She realized she was running out of time.  
"That ship" Tru asked the cop standing next to her. "What is it?"  
"Hmmm? Oh, liquid petroleum gas carrier" he turned back to the scene of the lifeboat.  
She took his arm "Is it explosive?"  
He looked at her curiously. "Sure is. See the red flag it's flying!" he pointed to the radar mast. "They make them dock out to sea and unload there"  
"So why is it coming into the harbor?" she asked.  
He looked back at it, puzzled.   
"It's a terrorist attack. See it's on fire!" she pointed towards the ship, smoke clearly visible from its' superstructure.   
"Oh Christ!" he exclaimed. He began shouting into his radio. It took a few minutes for the coastguard launch to change course and start towards the floating bomb. Alarm spread visibly throughout the assembled crowd. The police helicopter began its' approach towards the centre of the bay.  
"Come with me" the cop shouted hauling her into the back of his police car. It accelerated away, Tru sitting on knees in the rear, uncomfortable on the hard plastic seats, staring out the back window. The sound of gunfire reached her ears as the Coastguard launch began firing on the wheelhouse of the tanker with its' machine gun, desperately hosing down the bridge. The helicopter began to hover over the deck of the ship trying to play chicken with 100,000 tons of floating steel. Around her the emergency vehicles were using their public address systems to order everyone clear of the area.  
It wasn't enough. Too little, too late.  
She heard voices on the police radio shouting. Shouting about naval vessels and air strikes.  
Too late.  
She saw the tanker hit the sea wall, next to another ship, similar in design and appearance….  
"Why the hell did they give me a rewind day?" she wondered. "How could I stop this massive ship all by myself?"  
…then it vaporized.  
The police helicopter went first, consumed in the fireball. The Coastguard launch was next, capsized and then disintegrated by the blast wave.  
"Why isn't there any sound?" Tru questioned in the microsecond before the police car flipped through the air like a sycamore seed.  
Far too late.

She came to on a stretcher. She was deaf. Her head felt like she's washed down a pitcher of margaritas with a drain cleaner nightcap. She lifted her head up and regretted it. Her limbs felt leaden and slightly detached. She lacked the strength to get up and instead had to roll off the stretcher onto the ground.  
The dead and dying lay all around her in the hospital car park, the inside just too crowded for all. The surgeons went through them, deciding which would get priority, whom they could save and who was beyond help. Triage was the technical name, playing god the more popular term. There were already body bags piled up in one corner. Despite her efforts she and Davies would be busy this day.  
In the distance she saw a huge plume of smoke peeling up into the atmosphere. She wondered how long it would burn for?  
The cop was beside her, his neck swathed in bandages, a jagged piece of glass protruding from it. He was alive, still breathing, his eyes closed. His shirt had been cut open to reveal a Star of David necklace. It was only then that Tru knew where she'd seen him before.  
"I saved this one" she thought grimly. "You didn't get him this time"  
There was a commotion at the side of the car park. It looked like some sort of fight. She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled over, trying to avoid the wounded and dead all around her. The ground was covered in blood, the salty, coppery taste permeating the air, masking the heavy smog the fire was generating. Depending on it's age it was either sticky or slick underfoot.  
It wasn't until she saw the rope that she recognized the cowering figure in the centre of the mob.  
"NO! LET HIM GO!" she cried, still unable to hear her own voice. She grabbed arm of the ringleader and futilely tried to pull him away, feeling weak as a kitten. He effortlessly brushed her to one side, throwing her back onto the ground.  
"HE'S ONE OF THEM!" the man screamed, his face a mask of hatred, "HE'S ONE OF THOSE BASTARDS WHO DID THIS TO US!"  
It occurred to Tru that he was black. The irony of a black man leading a lynch mob was somehow lost on him. She guessed racism knew no boundaries. Other people hung around the periphery of the scene, some cheering, other's looking uncertain, none intervening.  
They looped the towrope over the lamppost. They made him stand on a chair as they pulled it taut…  
BLAM!  
The round went wild, ricocheting across the carpark after striking the wall, everyone in sight ducking at the noise. They froze.  
Tru turned the gun around in her hands, still shaking, still half-terrified of it, having just about worked out how to use it from a lifetime of TV cop shows and action movies Harrison had made her watch. She leveled it and walked up to the ringleader, jamming it into his chest.  
"Let him go" she said evenly.  
He looked at her without fear. He was still too angry to feel afraid.  
She jammed the pistol under his chin, forcing the barrel into his throat, looking him dead in the eye.  
"I-MEAN- IT!" she screamed at him, tightening her finger on the trigger.  
A pair of security guards appeared from the hospital doors. A cop ran into the car park, one arm swathed in bandages, the other bearing his pistol.  
The crowd melted away.  
The victim wrenched the noose from around his neck and lay gasping on the ground. The cop took in the entire scene in a moment, lowering his gun as Tru placed hers' on the ground and backed away from it.  
"I took it from him" she answered his unspoken question, pointing to his wounded colleague, still lying unconscious on the stretcher. He nodded and picked it up, unloading it before putting it in his pocket. The security guards stripped the rope from the Arab man's neck and helped him to his feet. "Dr Khan are you ok?" one asked.  
He nodded, still fighting for air. "He's a doctor?" Tru inquired as they helped him towards the ER.  
"He's our trauma surgeon" the guard responded, disappearing through the hospital doors.

The pyre still burned. The said it would take weeks before it burnt out entirely. Thankfully the wind swept the smoke out to sea otherwise the city would be virtually uninhabitable. They walked to the shore still filled with onlookers and TV news crews. Tru bore the flowers in her hands. There were 56 in all, one for every body they'd taken into the morgue.  
Twelve less than the day before it rewound.  
There would be others of course. Some wounded would die, some more bodies would be recovered. Others would never be found. But this was for the 56.  
They each took a turn casting them into the waters, mute, thankful yet saddened. Tru, Davies, Harrison, Meredith and Kristine, each lost in their own thoughts, even Harrison silent for once.  
As they were leaving Tru spotted the lone figure by the dock. She left the others and walked over to him. He looked up as she approached, taking a moment before he recognized her. When he did a look of relief and resignation spread over his face. He still bore the mark on his skin where she'd shoved the barrel of her gun into it.   
"Thank you" he managed at last "Thank you for stopping me. I don't know what came over me. I just… I lost my entire crew yesterday…" his voice tailed off. Instead of speaking he simply fingered the insignia on his fireman's uniform.  
"How many did I save?" Tru wondered. "How many did Dr Khan save? How many more will he save in his lifetime? Or that cop with the Star of David?"  
But she knew one thing. She'd saved this man. Saved more than just his life.  
She took his hand and placed the last flower into it. Together they cast it into the waters of Boston harbor.  
Child to the mother. River to the sea.


End file.
